


I Just Want to Be Close to You

by miss_grey



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Invasion of Privacy, Manipulation, Obsession, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Villains, brief mention of substance abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22960897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_grey/pseuds/miss_grey
Summary: Jim Moriarty makes a visit to 221B Baker Street while Sherlock is out.
Relationships: Jim Moriarty/Villainy, Sherlock Holmes & Jim Moriarty
Comments: 11
Kudos: 12





	I Just Want to Be Close to You

**Author's Note:**

> Lysel conviced me to watch Sherlock and now I've become fixated on this charming psychopath and his evil ways. I blame her and Andrew Scott for this.

It was a beautiful, sunny day in London—a change after the relentless rain of the last week. People strolled, arm in arm, bustling along the sidewalks and through the parks, coats off, soaking up the warmth, enraptured by such small pleasures.

No one noticed him.

Amidst the pedestrians on Baker street, he was anonymous in jeans and a dark Henley, hands shoved in his pockets, earbuds in, stepping jauntily to ABBA. No one paid him any attention when he stopped in front of 221B and twisted the knob— _unlocked._ He chuckled to himself, shaking his head. _Oh, Sherlock, overconfidence or apathy?_ The man in question was out, along with his loyal lapdog—they’d be at the bank, working hard to solve the robbery for the next few hours at least, if he’d played his cards right, _which he had, because, well, of course he had._ And Mrs. Hudson, the loyal landlady was out on a date, illicit, with a charming barkeep—she only ever went out with him when she knew the boys were out to play. 

_Looks like no one’s home, then, oh dear._ He stepped into the building and allowed the door to swing shut behind him. Before him, a steep set of stairs, and at the top…. He pulled his earbuds out and switched his music off. He took each step slowly, savoring the ascent. He reached out, trailed his fingers reverently along the walls on either side of him, feeling each bump and slight crack in the plaster. _Well-lived or neglect?_

The second door opened just as easily; _a shame, not even an attempt at a challenge, though I suppose we’re both above the illusion of locks at this point._ Jim Moriarty smiled as his feet scuffed the plush rug and he shut the door firmly behind him. The inner sanctum was everything he’d hoped it would be, a reflection of the mind he’d been… _studying, stalking, playing with_ for so long. Cluttered, busy, almost chaotic, with stacks of books, dust, half-finished experiments, dirty tea cups and biscuit crumbs. And yet, Moriarty knew that it was highly organized, in a way that most human minds could never grasp, with even the spray of dust a pattern that had been memorized. He never doubted that Sherlock could walk into the room, scan it and in less than a second, detect any changes in the precise arrangement that meant nothing to anyone other than him. He might even be able to sense another presence had been here before he entered the room. 

Moriarty rolled his shoulders and moved inward, enjoying the trespass. He reached out, trailed his fingers over everything, like spiders creeping, cataloguing. _Anything that is yours now is by my leave—I could take it all now, if I wanted. But that would be too…easy._ He cast his eyes to the side and made his way to what he knew was Sherlock’s bedroom and he wasn’t disappointed by that, either. The space was sparser than the rest of the flat, emptier, evidence of neglect. _Not sleeping well, Sherlock? Tut, tut._ Still, the bed looked soft, the sheets serviceable, even if they were messy and cold. 

Moriarty toed his shoes off at the edge then laid himself out on the bed, his head pillowed in the slight indent of Sherlock’s. He nestled in, adjusting his body and folding his hands on his chest. He gazed up at the ceiling, as he knew Sherlock would, and fixed his eyes on the slight water stain above him, evidence of a drip, drip, drip that must have driven the man deliciously mad. _What does a consulting detective think about when he’s supposed to be sleeping?_ A smile. _His cases, of course. Especially the tricky ones. The fun ones. The prickly ones that don’t fit an easy pattern, that nip at the edges of his mind even when he thinks he’s moved beyond them._ And all of that meant: _Me._

 _It’s rather sexy when you think of it. He lays here thinking about me, sleepless, restless, and now I am here, thinking about him thinking about me. Oh Sherlock, we share this bed, don’t we? You invite me into it every single night._ “It won’t be that easy, though, Sherlock.” Moriarty murmured, closing one eye and aiming at the water stain. “If you want me, you’ll have to do better than this.” He swung his legs over the side and stood, shoving his shoes back on, suddenly restless. The loo was just off the bedroom and he made his way there next. Cleaner than the rest of the flat— _Mrs. Hudson, always cleaning up after you, isn’t she? Pathetic, Sherlock, really you must do better._ Sparse, just like the bedroom, with the outward appearance of a man who cared very little for his physical appearance, too wrapped up in his mind to care about anything else, a walking intellect. “But we both know that isn’t true, don’t we, Sherlock, dear? You’ve got a streak of vanity.” Moriarty opened the medicine cabinet and _ah yes, here we are._ Comb, hair product, shaving implements, and bottles of pills. _You hate that photo with the hat, I know you do, it irks every aloof, mysterious, pretentious bone in your body. How dare they reduce you to a caricature of what you are? How dare they cast their own flippant image of you into the public light? You are more than that, but you’d never let them know it bothers you. To do so would be to admit that you’re as vain as you pretend not to be, so you swallow it down and pretend you’re above such things._ Moriarty pulled each unlabeled bottle off the shelf and rolled his eyes as he opened them. “Showing off, aren’t you, Sherlock? You play this game every time you open a bottle, don’t you? Labels mean nothing when you’ve got the size, shape, color, and taste memorized. Upper, downer, who cares?” _You almost wish you’d make a mistake one day, don’t you? Do you ever get tired of always being right?_ “Don’t worry, Sherlock, I’m here for you.” 

After he’d inspected each bottle in turn, he arranged them perfectly in their places, deciding to move on. It’d be too easy to lace them with something. Boring. He huffed as he shut the medicine cabinet, taking in the rest of the room, before his eyes landed on the lone toothbrush in the holder. Moriarty reached out and grasped it by the handle, brought it to his nose and sniffed. _Mint._ He rolled his eyes. Typical. He popped it into his mouth and made his way out of the bathroom. _Something to remember me by, lover, on those long, sleepless nights._

In the den again, he appraised the patterned wall-paper and cocked his head appreciatively at the strange, yellow-spray-painted smiley face with bullet holes in it. “Oooh, here we are,” Moriarty cooed, shoving the toothbrush into his cheek. He climbed up onto the couch with his shoes on, “what is this now, Sherlock?” He laughed happily. “Oh you’re a hypocrite, aren’t you, love? Be careful, your psychopath is showing.” He pressed his palms against the wall and leaned forward, cocking his head at the precise angle of the smiley face and he grinned back at it. He traced the bullet holes, the result of boredom and frustration. “I’ve been neglecting you, haven’t I?” He wondered. “I suppose I’ll have to do better.”

Filled with new, straining, barely-contained energy, he sauntered into the kitchen and pulled the refrigerator doors open. “Ah, hello,” Moriarty hummed, leaning down to get a better look at the jar of eyes he found in the center of the shelf. He picked the jar up and held it in front of his face, swishing it around for a moment before pursing his lips in distaste. “You’re impossible, aren’t you?” Moriarty mumbled around the toothbrush which had lost its minty taste by this point. “You want more eyes to practice on? You only had to ask,” He murmured. “I can arrange that easily enough.” And he’d seen some _very_ striking eyes in the office. Bright blue and a grassy green. “Call it a gift.”

He replaced the jar and closed the fridge, casting his eyes dispassionately over the dirty dishes and bottles of solutions, the expanse of tubes and pipes and vials jumbled on the counter. _Busy. Always busy. But never satisfied, never quite CHALLENGED enough, are you? I understand. It’s hard living in a world of predictable, boring sheep._

Back in the den, Moriarty trailed his fingers over the spines of each of Sherlock’s books, mindful of the dust patterns. “Don’t want to give up the game yet, do we?” He mumbled, removing the toothbrush and using it to point at each book. “Eenie, meenie, miney moe….” _Engravings of the Arteries; Illustrating the Anatomy of the Human Body, and Serving as an Introduction to the Surgery of the Arteries by Sir Charles Bell, Surgeon._ Moriarty plucked the book from the shelf, careful not to disrupt the dust, and flipped it open. “Oooh, very nice,” he murmured, appreciative of the clear, colorful illustrations of arteries in the human body. He glanced at the publication date. _1816\. Oh, Dr. Bell, you naughty boy. You probably hired deviants to steal bodies for you, didn’t you? It’s so hard being a visionary. These are beautiful._ “The problem,” Moriarty mumbled around the toothbrush, “is that it never looks like this in reality. Blood changes the landscape quite effectively.” He shrugged and reached into his pocket to retrieve one of the notes that he’d pre-written for the Consulting Detective. It read, simply, “7.” A nice, prime number. Perfect for schemes and mysteries and keeping detectives awake at night. 

He replaced the book then pulled another—a vintage book on the physics of bird flight—and slid another note into it, between pages 55 and 56. This one read “Midnight—Eternity.”

The third went into a Hungarian dictionary, precise in that he placed the message “Miss me?” above the entry _vágyakozás._ Poetic. And if he was right in his calculations, which he always was, Sherlock would open this book in exactly 15 days and get the message. Moriarty smiled, feeling a shiver of pre-emptive pleasure. 

Finally, he flipped through the pages of a dense chemistry book and dropped slips of paper reading “yellow”, “red,” “blue,” and “white,” at random intervals.

It pleased him to know that these messages would be found at odd times, irrelevant to this visit. That Sherlock might find them and wonder just how many times Moriarty had been inside of his home, that each shock might cause another shiver of disruption to go through the detective, might set off a firing of neurons, the spark of an obsessive, restless night, the frantic paging through books, tossing each aside, the uneasy air of the unknown, of possibility, of insecurity reflected in his otherwise unflappable companion. 

Half of the messages meant absolutely nothing. Of course, the fun was going to be Sherlock coming to that conclusion himself after a manic episode, the seething desire to search, analyze, understand. And of course, then he’d have to figure out which ones mattered and which ones didn’t. And when he’d finally reached the point where he had them sorted, and he’d be ready to dismiss half, his eye would catch upon a perfectly, precisely placed headline that would make him reconsider everything he’d just decided. He’d have a tough moment where he’d have to consider that they were all part of a much larger pattern that had just begun to unfold.

Moriarty shrugged, stepping away from the bookshelf and admiring his handiwork, pleased that the dust hadn’t been disrupted. They _were_ pointless, half of them, but they could be easily given meaning. If he felt like it. If Sherlock needed it. If things looked to be getting _too boring._ As he’d said to the man before, _I’m so changeable._

Besides, he only kept Sherlock on his toes in the hopes that he’d return the favor, because really, it was difficult to keep himself occupied otherwise. 

Returning to the loo, Moriarty pulled the toothbrush from his mouth and put it back in its holder, smiling serenely at the idea that sometime soon, Sherlock would pop it into his own mouth, mechanically, unthinking, and in that moment, like so many others, Moriarty would be with him, always right there, under his skin, unconscious, consuming.

Pleased with himself, Moriarty slipped his earbuds back into his ears, turned his music back on, and shut the door to the flat behind him on his way out. Filled with bubbly energy, he jogged down the stairs and back into the sunshine, dreaming of possibilities.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first ever Sherlock fic. Please let me know what you thought and feel free to come say hi on tumblr. I'm @realhunterswearplaid.


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